ASPIRING teachers will need to pass an interview and show off previous work to gain entry to teaching degrees in a radical training shake-up being considered by the new government.

In his first interview about schools, incoming Education Minister Christopher Pyne also said Naplan testing would be moved online as early as next year and the Commonwealth would shortly commence a review into the national curriculum.

Mr Pyne said he was in the process of establishing a short term ministerial advisory group to report early in the new year on the “priority issue” of improving teacher quality.

But his preferred option would see teaching students undertake practicum placement from the first weeks of their studies and to only gain entry to teaching degrees after showing a body of work and passing an interview.

Mr Pyne said teaching was currently a default degree for high school leavers, and that he wanted it to be considered as prestigious as top tier subjects such as the law and medicine.

“In medical school they use a range of different methods to choose their students,” Mr Pyne said.

“I don’t want teaching to be the last preference, I want it to be the first and second preference of students.

“The rigour of the course, the quality of the course, the capacity to get a job afterwards — these are the things that will improve teaching.”

Mr Pyne said some graduates were unable to teach children how to read and that he supported a raft of measures announced by the previous Labor government to address the issue, including compulsory literacy and numeracy testing for uni students.

“In terms of the selection of teachers, I am not in favour of minimum ATAR scores but I am in favour of using a range of methods to choose new teaching students, whether it’s a body of work they have done in the past or an interview based around their passion for teaching as a first or second preference,” he said.

Reviewing the national curriculum was also a priority, with the Coalition keen to redress a left wing bias to the history course in particular which he said currently contained “apologia for Australia’s past”.

“I don’t believe that the current history curriculum strikes the right balance,” he said.

“I think it’s unusual that the curriculum has an emphasis on the trade union movement but doesn’t also have an emphasis on the role of industry and agriculture and mining in the building of this country.

“I think it’s unusual that Labor Party and Labor prime ministers are included in the curriculum but the role of Coalition government, certainly in the post war period — the curriculum is silent on that role despite us being in government for two thirds of that period.”

Mr Pyne said there would also be several changes to the controversial Naplan regime, with the Government taking over its implementation from the independent Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority and likely to stop publishing individual school results on the My School website.

“The purpose of the Naplan was not to publish league tables, so if the purpose has become altered by its publication then that’s something that we need to look at changing,” he said.

He would also seek to move the annual testing of all Year 3, 5, 7, and 9 students online before the projected rollout of 2016.

“I think that’s a bit late. I would like to see if we can turn that around faster,” he said.

The mooted changes to teacher training met with general support from within the sector.

Professor Stephen Dinham, the chairman of Teacher Education and director of Learning and Teaching at the University of Melbourne, said candidates should be judged not only on their academic results but also on certain personality traits.

“We want the highest academic entry to teaching that we can get but that isn’t sufficient (enough),” he said.

“We also need ways of measuring peoples’ suitability for teaching.”

Australian Primary Principals Association deputy president Steve Portlock said there needed to be a process that judged skills such as communication and personability to decide “their ability to become good teachers”.

“There needs to be a process to identify the best possible candidates for teaching,” he said.

“At the moment universities take as many people as they can (for teaching degrees). We want to raise the stakes.”

Australian Education Union deputy federal president Correna Haythorpe said she would want to see more detail of Mr Pyne’s plans before committing her full support.

“It is vitally important that if any changes to entry requirements or curriculum or other education matters are being proposed that those changes are devised by experts, people who are actually in the field,” Ms Haythorpe said.

“Our message to Mr Pyne is that it is also about the ongoing resourcing and professional development that is needed for teachers throughout their careers.”